Monday, May 01, 2006

May Day

Greetings from the East coast. I'm back in Pennsylvania, outside Philly, after a weekend in NYC at the ASJA annual conference. Travis is downstairs watching I Dream of Jeanie in my old friend Phyllis' lizard room (three cages with lizards) and we're waiting for the clothes to dry before we take off for our last day in Southeastern PA.

The conference was wonderful (as usual). Hope some of you can make it next year. I've agreed to be co-chair, along with Trish Riley. Am I a glutton for punishment? you may be thinking. Do I really need one more thing to do? I will admit, partially it was Trish, this year's co-chair, who wooed me. She's a wonderful person and writer from Florida who asked and eventually got me to say yes. (It will be on the 3rd weekend of April, 2007; check out www.asja.org for eventual details. There you can order tapes from this year's conference, if you want to see what it's all about.)

I put together, and moderated, a panel about making books into movies. Karen Quinn, who wrote The Ivy Chronicles, which is being made into a movie with Catherine Zeta-Jones; Stephen Morrison, editor-in-chief and publisher of Penguin books; and literary agent Bill Contardi, were my panelists. It was standing room only--a great panel with a ton of information on how books (fiction and nonfiction) are made into movies.

NYC was fun, as usual, too. We stayed at the Grand Hyatt, where the conference takes place, which is right over Grand Central Station, making it easy to get around. My friend from high school, Carol Polite Sanford, came in (and spent Sat. afternoon with Travis; they went to the Central Park Zoo). Friday night we walked to Times Square and Saturday night we took the subway to Little Italy and ate at a little Italian restaurant.

We'll be recapping the conference in The ASJA Monthly in coming months (read it at www.asja.org) and I'll be reviewing tapes of panels.

Back to California tomorrow.

(Thanks, Bellakarma, for prompting me to post something about the trip!)

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About Barbara

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett is author of the bestselling and award-winning Pen on Fire: A Busy Woman's Guide to Igniting the Writer Within (Harcourt, 2004), which is now in its 8th printing. She has a short story, "Crazy for You," in Orange County Noir, published by Akashic Books (2010) and an essay, "Knitting, My Urban Escape," in Knitting Through It (Voyageur, 2008). She hosts and produces Writers on Writing, which airs Weds. at 9 a.m. Pacific on KUCI-FM 88.9 in Orange Co., Ca, and streams live at www.kuci.org